Mae Jemison, First African-American Woman in Space, on the Shuttle's End

Physician and astronaut Mae Jemison was the first African American woman to travel in space, flying on board space shuttle mission STS-47 in 1992. With the final shuttle launch scheduled for tomorrow, Jemison tells PM why the program stagnated, and why citizens should care.

What was special about the shuttle?

Because it was a reusable vehicle, we were able to study what happened to it and got some familiarity with it. We could take up equipment and put things into orbit that couldn't travel on a larger, non-human-rated vehicle because of all the G-forces. We couldn't have launched the Hubble Space Telescope on anything else. And having the capacity to repair things in orbit, such as the Hubble and Space Station, was also important about the shuttle.

I think we took that for granted. In many ways, if there was a failure in the program, it was that we did not recognize what an incredible piece of equipment and engineering the shuttle was. Any time there was an accident or a delay or a hold, people said it was a failure. No, it was an incredible piece of equipment. Yes, it was complicated, but going into space, having all of these capacities, is a sophisticated kind of venture.

Are you nostalgic at all that the shuttle program is ending?

My sadness about the shuttle ending is only because we don't have another vehicle right now that the U.S. can use to get people into orbit. We don't even have any vehicles on the drawing board with the same capacity that the shuttle has. The shuttle should have kept flying while we committed ourselves to building the next generation of shuttles, or the next generation of space-faring vehicles that were reusable, single-stage to orbit and could eventually get out of low-earth orbit.

Was there a specific time when you saw the program lose its commitment?

The magic left after the Challenger accident. We were so stunned as a society to see this happen. The shuttle had made space seem so commonplace up to then, people thought it was just like getting on an airplane. Then after the accident, we [started] thinking it's dangerous. Well, it's always been dangerous. We needed to continue to move on. You don't stop and become timid. You rededicate yourself and pay attention.

A report came out that said we needed to take small steps forward. The reality is, the way you make changes sometimes requires you to take revolutionary steps. Sputnik was a revolutionary step. Committing to going to the moon and Apollo were revolutionary steps. When we started talking about using off-the-shelf components, I think it led to something like Constellation where suddenly we're going all of the way back to the Apollo days and using that as the model. We started saying we didn't want to have to create new technology. Well, no, that's part of our job. That's the reason for our existence to do stuff that nobody else can do. Not go back and try to rebuild a Saturn V, just a little bit fancier. You have to push the technological envelope and make a commitment to something even if you don't know exactly how to do it.

After the Challenger accident, when you say people in the program were more timid, do you think the program started going downhill?

I would say it stagnated. I came in the first class after the Challenger accident, and I think we were more withdrawn and timid then. We said it's going to take us 20 years to go back to the Moon. But we did it the first time in 10 years!

You know, I was thrilled to be joining the astronaut program and I saw a lot, but I always wanted to push more. If you want to talk about any failures, it was that we stopped thinking that we could do difficult things. We thought they had to be easy and not test our capacities. Humans need to be bold if we want to expand our horizons.

What do you think will be the future of the space program?

I don't know where it's going to go. So much of it has to do with a dedication from the American people, but they aren't interested in baby steps. People were riveted when we saw Sojourner on the surface of Mars. We were on Mars! Space represented something even more than pride against Russia. It fired our imaginations.

Space should be a civilian venture, one that can actually get humans and nations to work together, rather than one that's another outpost for us to expand. The last thing we need to do is to take this nonsense about not figuring out how to share a planet into low-earth orbit.

And it would be a shame if things were privatized to the extent that we didn't see a role for the government anymore. If people go to the moon without an understanding about what it represents for all of the people on Earth and orbital space, then we end up having problems. As citizens, we paid for most of the technology that it takes to get into space and private companies are taking advantage of that. We need to know that we all have a stake in what happens.

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